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More "Maddening" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... severity of the labor that destroyed their minds, but the uselessness and objectlessness of it. Sane men require reasonable employment; idleness, or irrational work disintegrates their minds. They want to see and to foresee intelligible results from their toil; mere toil without such results is maddening, or it rots men's minds as scurvy rots their bodies. The reason is, that the men are human; and if you have hitherto supposed that convicts are not human, the insanity which so constantly follows upon prison idleness or mis-employment should ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... am afraid, as any second-hand bookseller's apprentice could have done it," said Wharton, shaking his head. "It's maddening to think what duffers we ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... tearing off his clothes, he was trampling them beneath his feet, he was crying out in a strange, raucous voice; and all the swaying crowds were taking up his words, maddening themselves and their fellows ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... he, "memoranda of two—chances, shall I call them?—which seem to me very good, though, as I have already said, every clew seems good. That is the maddening, the heart-breaking, part of such an investigation. I have made these brief notes from letters received, one yesterday, one the day before, from an agent of mine who has been searching the bains de mer of the north coast. This agent writes that some one very much resembling poor Arthur ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... as Deena turned and came slowly down the stairs. He only wished she did look funny, or anything, except the intoxicating, maddening contrast to her usual sober self that ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... The day was one of burning discomfort, spent in cracks and nullas, under blanket bivouacs. We had tramped, from dawn, through eight miles of 'chivvy-dusters,' and our camp was now among them. These are a grass which crams the clothes and feet with maddening needles; once in they seemed there 'for duration.' The soldier out East knows them for his worst foe on a march. Lest we should be obsessed with these, we were infested with sandflies and mosquitoes. But large black ants ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson
... Since the last, a maddening jealousy had seized me. For, returning from those unknown regions into which her soul had wandered away, and where she had stayed for hours, did she not sometimes awake with a smile? How could I be sure that she did not lead two distinct existences?—that she had not ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... to look for the person in distress. There was no answer, no one in sight. As I reached the steep slope, leading upward to the high peaks, I heard terrified, heart-rending cries, southward, toward the spot from which the first call had come. It was strange, and maddening, that I could hear him so distinctly, yet he could not hear me. He was certainly deaf or very stupid, for he continued calling for help, when help was pursuing him and yelling at ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... cried Almamen, in atone of deep anguish. "I, then, at last regain my child? Do I press her to my heart? and is it only for that brief moment, when I stand upon the brink of death? Leila, my child, look up! smile upon thy father; let him feel, on his maddening and burning brow, the sweet breath of the last of his race, and bear with him, at least, one holy and gentle ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book IV. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... close to me. I can only remember the purr of a motor as an ambulance rushed up. Then I saw four stretcher-bearers; two grabbed the German, and two caught hold of me. We were rushed to the ambulance and driven at maddening speed ...
— Private Peat • Harold R. Peat
... her fond arms enfold me? O let her kindling bosom hold me! Feel I not always her distress? The houseless am I not? the unbefriended? The monster without aim or rest? That, like a cataract, from rock to rock descended To the abyss, with maddening greed possest: She, on its brink, with childlike thoughts and lowly,— Perched on the little Alpine field her cot,— This narrow world, so still and holy Ensphering, like a heaven, her lot. And I, God's hatred daring, Could not be content ...
— Faust • Goethe
... Rinaldo! One gets awfully fond of a horse. Rinaldo was very naughty sometimes, but I loved him all the more for it. And now his good looks have been disastrous. Oh that he had been uglier. Isn't it maddening. Such a leaper, so fast, and such courage. Well, perhaps I shall see ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson
... have been trifled with—scorned! She, daughter of the erst proudest planter in all Mississippi State, has been slighted for a Creole girl; possibly, one of the "poor white trash" living along the bayous' edge. Full proof she has of his perfidy, or how should Darke know of it? More maddening still, the man so slighting her, has been making boast of it, proclaiming her suppliance and shame, showing her photograph, exulting in the triumph ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... tear To gem our pleasure Will then appear. A few more hours, And I find my rest In maddening bliss, On the loved one's breast. Life, never ending, Swells mighty in me; I look from above down - Look back upon thee. By yonder hillock Expires thy beam; And comes with a shadow, The cooling gleam. Oh, call me, ...
— Peter Schlemihl etc. • Chamisso et. al.
... of it, and the voluptuous pause and the soft, lingering cadence before it rose again. In the music of each separate verse there was the whole episode of man's love and woman's, the illusion and the image, the image and the maddening, leaping, all-satisfying, ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... up and down the formal walks in the garden. Away from the maddening fascination of her presence, his mind grew clearer. He resisted the temptation to think of her tenderly; he set himself to consider what it would be well to ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... we tried, the more determined I became. She would sit there, calm and placid, until one of us entered the water. Then she became a veritable fury. It was maddening. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... two jaguars, which followed his movements with glaring eyes. A single glance satisfied him they were cubs; but a maddening thought shot across his brain: the mother was out, probably not far; she might return in a moment, and he had no arms, except his knife and the barrel of his broken rifle. While musing upon his perilous ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... always in a hurry," he remarked as he refilled his pipe with a deliberation that was maddening to his hearers. "But just let me get my pipe drawing well, and I'll tell you all I know. It isn't so much after all as maybe you think, but it may help to piece out ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport
... the strategist confided, "your dearest Annabel is going to cover herself with Parisian disgrace. You don't know how maddening it is to have every step dogged by a woman who never was, never could have been—and manifestly never will be—young! Wasn't that a divine flash about the corbeille and the mayor? Miss Chantry will wait outside half a day. ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... the purpose of Philip to end the life of his son by other means than execution he could not have taken better measures. For a young man of his high spirit and fiery temper such strict confinement was maddening. At first he was thrown into a frenzy, and tried more than once to make way with himself. The sullenness of despair succeeded. He grew daily more emaciated, and the malarial fever which had so long affected him now returned in a severe degree. ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... new and apart and wonderful? No sleek-haired, slim and straight-backed youth said exactly any of these things to her, but somehow they were conveyed and filled her with a wondering realization of the fact that if they were true, they were no longer dreadful and maddening, since they only made people like and want to dance with one. To dance, to like people and be liked seemed so heavenly natural and right—to be only like air and sky and free, happy breathing. There was, it was true, a blissful little uplifted look about her which she herself was ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... snorting out inarticulate disgust as he tumbled into his tent; but I stood above the embers of the camp fire thinking. Again I felt with a creepiness, that set all my flesh quaking, felt, rather than saw, those maddening, tiger eyes of the dark foliage watching me. Looking up, I found my morose canoeman on the other side of the fire, leaning so close to a tree, he was barely visible in the shadows. Thinking himself unseen by me, ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... about Peter that his highly imperious, poised employer found it impertinent, not to say maddening. Peter had a look of the freedom of desert distances in his eyes already. A lieutenant was actually radiating happiness in that neutral-toned sanctum of power, particularly ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... the manzanita slope, little flashes of light kept calling, calling, and Jack dared not answer. One, two—one, two, three—could anything in the world be more maddening? ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... and half remonstrating; but he replied with the utmost solemnity, explaining to them, in a maddening little sermon, that one can always find some small occupation that is helpful to others. He did not find a spud; but he found an old broom made of twigs, with which he began energetically to brush the fallen ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... hand over his mouth; when she had clearly exhausted his memory, she had announced that they would go up to Town the next day, and that on Sunday morning, sun, rain, or snow, he would motor her down to where Lyveden dwelt; then she had said she was sorry she'd shaken him, smiled him a maddening smile, told him, with a rare blush, that Anthony Lyveden was "the most wonderful man in the world," kissed him between the eyes, and then darted out of the room, ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... you let yourself have a good time?" she had asked, and the question repeated itself now with maddening insistence. Was he, who had always had everything, now missing something—something ...
— The Honorable Percival • Alice Hegan Rice
... Ferdinand! How does she ever open it? What ages of life slip by as she unfolds it! Women know this by experience! As to men, when they are in such maddening passes, ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac
... sleep on damp straw in the midst of slush and snow, and peeping through the ragged tent roof at the moon as he lay on his back, surrounded by Gipsies of both sexes, of all ages and sizes, cursing each other under the maddening influence of brandy and disappointment. To make himself and his damsel comfortable on a Gipsy tour he fills his pocket with gold, flask with brandy, buys a quantity of rugs upon which are a number of ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... they injured neither men nor crops, but they were harder to endure than a major disaster. One was aware of them everywhere, on the chair one sat in, on the food one ate, on one's body. They were a crawling, maddening nightmare. ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... with watchful eyes In silence, for the tongue cannot avail. Vex not his wounds with rhetoric, nor the stale Worn truths, that are but maddening mockeries To him whose grief outmasters all replies. Only watch near him gently; do but bring The piteous help of silent ministering, Watchful and tender. ...
— Among the Millet and Other Poems • Archibald Lampman
... danced on the drifting clouds before me, while whirling savages chanting in horrid discord stuck my frenzied body full of blazing brands. At times I was awake, calling in vain for water to quench a thirst which grew maddening, then I lapsed into a semi-consciousness that drove me wild with its delirious fancies. I knew vaguely that the Major had crept back through the darkness and passed his strong arm gently beneath my head. I heard him shouting in his deep voice to the driver for something ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... one, went nowhere, and scarce allowed myself sufficient time for my meals. My whole life was absorbed in contemplation as rapt as that of any of the Romish saints. Every hour that I gazed upon the divine form strengthened my passion,—a passion that was always overshadowed by the maddening conviction, that, although I could gaze on her at will, she never, never could ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... she be there? Or in the woods, or on her way to some unknown place far out of our reach? The thought is maddening, Mr. Harper, and I feel as helpless as a child under it. Shall we get detectives from the county-seat, or start on the hunt ourselves? We might hear something ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... could not suppose that any friendly feeling on the part of her persecutors would induce them to adopt a course which might relieve that much-loved relative's mind concerning her. What would Francisco conjecture? Oh! these thoughts were maddening! ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... could bear. He was torn with the fierce promptings of primeval forces. To take her, willing or unwilling, despite honour, despite all that stood between them, to make her his and hold her in the face of all the world—at times the temptation had been maddening. There had been days when he had not dared to look on her, when he had drawn himself more than ever apart from the common life, fearful of himself, fearful of circumstances that seemed beyond his ordering. And the thought ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... punish him for his lewdness and hypocrisy—yes, punish him through the medium of his own bad passions, and in a manner that would torture him with alternate hope and despair; now inspiring him with rapture by apparently almost yielding to his wishes, and then maddening him by my resistance—at the same time resolving not to submit to his desires in any case. This was my plan for punishing the hoary libertine, and you shall see how ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... part of the accidents of the day. My mind was maddening, and I was ripe for mischief. Belmont in the evening went to the hazard table, and I determined to accompany him, to which he encouraged me. The impetus was given, and, as if resolved on destruction, I put all my money, except a ten pound note to pay my Bath debts, ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... Fitzjohn's Avenue once lived that ever popular Academician, the late Mr. John Pettie. Mr. Pettie was a vigorous draughtsman and a beautiful colourist, and many of his portraits are very fine. He seemed to revel in painting a red coat—an object to many painters as maddening as it is to the infuriated bull. On one "Show Sunday" before the sending-in day of the Royal Academy, at which he exhibited, I recollect admiring a portrait of Mr. Lamb, the celebrated golfer, in his red coat, when the original of the portrait came into ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... court-house, and because this space was meager, that the country folk and excursionists and townsmen showed in such compressed numbers at every turn. In reality, however, they were by no means countless; and if Robert's eagle glance continued to travel from face to face, with that maddening thoroughness— ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... With dying hand the rudder held, Till in his fall, with fateful sway, The steerage of the realm gave way! Then, while on Britain's thousand plains One unpolluted church remains, Whose peaceful bells ne'er sent around The bloody tocsin's maddening sound, But still, upon the hallowed day, Convoke the swains to praise and pray; While faith and civil peace are dear, Grace this cold marble with a tear - He who preserved them, Pitt, ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... he discovered two men in the vicinity of the jail. A cold shudder nearly paralyzed him. Was his labor all in vain? Had he with so much trial and suffering effected his escape, only to be incarcerated again? The thought was maddening, and he resolved to die rather than be returned ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... review I can't forget How oft in sickness, grief and pain, Thy loving heart our needs has met, While solace rich came in thy train. Nor when thyself on sick bed lay, Racked with Neuralgia's maddening pangs. How Patience kept the wolf at bay, And made him soon withdraw his fangs. My darling sweet, 'Tis surely meet I thee with ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... her mouth and eyes! Her strange, sweet, maddening eyes, her subtle mouth! Mouth in whose closure all love's sweetness lives,— Eyes with the warm gleam of ...
— In Divers Tones • Charles G. D. Roberts
... a sweeter draught, I gather from that rill of thine, Than maddening drunkards ever quaff'd, Than all the treasures ...
— Oriental Literature - The Literature of Arabia • Anonymous
... of Fear is a maddening maze Of paths that wind on without exit or end, From nowhere to nowhere lead all of its ways, And shadows with shadows in more shadows blend. Each guide-post is lettered, 'This way to Despair,' And the River of Death in the darkness flows near, But there is ...
— Poems of Purpose • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... it all came to her with a rush; but the words ran together and swam in a maddening blur—the roar from the street below, dull with distance; the hum of the big building, with its faint concussions of closing doors; the air from the open window, not like the sweet prairie air of to-day, but heavy, smoky, typical breath ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... Indeed, our inclination has always been to regard with an indulgence, which to some rigid moralists appears excessive, those faults into which gentle and noble spirits are sometimes hurried by the excitement of conflict, by the maddening influence of sympathy, and by ill-regulated zeal ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... in the heart of the elder growth, hidden from all the rest of the world and isolated from anything that might have promised relief. In the branches innumerable large, glossy blackbirds kept up a maddening chatter, and higher above, up in the hot sky, the omnipresent buzzards floated lazily, awaiting sight of possible carrion prey. Animals began to appear almost underfoot, coons and rabbits, disturbed for the first time in their fastness. Water holes ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... Crisp hair, frank eyes, and honest English skin. Two minutes only! Conscious of a name, The new man plants his weapon with profound Long-practised skill that no mere trick may scare. Not loth, the rested lad resumes the game: The flung ball takes one maddening, tortuous bound, And the mid-stump three somersaults ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... more chill, now. Kirk decided that it must be night, though he didn't feel sleepy. He crawled under the tarpaulin which Ken kept to cover the trunks in foul weather. In doing so, he bumped against the engine. There was another maddening thing! A good, competent engine, sitting complacently in the middle of the boat, and he not able to start it! But even if he had known how to run it, he reflected that he couldn't steer the boat. So he lay still under the tarpaulin, which was dry, as well ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price
... locomotive at the further end of the town—strident noises brought from the West to break the drowsy murmur of the Orient, but not a sight nor a sound which could give him a clew as to the whereabouts of Linke or Countess Marishka. The inaction was maddening. In his belt the American revolver hung its futile weight. Had it not been for Linke, he might have had a chance at least to follow the instructions of the note of the Hotel Europa to some conclusion whether for good or ill—it did not matter. If Marishka herself had written it!... She would be ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... marks—twenty pounds," said Fritzing, interrupting what was to him a most maddening music. "Four hundred marks. As much as many a German girl can only earn by labouring two years you will receive for doing nothing but ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... therefore, you have not rosbif expressed in every lineament of your countenance; if the soles of your boots are less than an inch thick, and your clothes are not reduced in color to the invariable and maddening tone of the English tweed,—you must resign yourself to be a German. All this is grievous to the soul which loves to spread its eagle in every land and to be known as American, with star-spangled ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... cut into his flesh, for his wrists had swollen as he lay there, and the burning thirst was becoming maddening. ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... photographic plates, but the heat in my tent, notwithstanding the fly, made perspiration flow so freely that it was difficult to avoid damage. Moreover, I was greatly annoyed by the small yellow bees, which were very numerous. They clung to my face and hair in a maddening manner, refusing to be driven away. If caught with ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... at eleven o'clock. But we hadn't any idea of whether it was ten or eleven or twelve, because there was no light to see Jerry's watch by. He had just an ordinary Ingersoll, not the grand Radiolite kind that you can see in the dark and it was perfectly maddening to hear it ticking away cheerfully, and no good to us at all. Just then something cold wrapped itself around my ankle. It was the edge of ...
— Us and the Bottleman • Edith Ballinger Price
... flight of steps, they cluster like bees. Meanwhile (and especially on festa-days) the bells of the churches ring incessantly; not in peals, or any known form of sound, but in a horrible, irregular, jerking, dingle, dingle, dingle: with a sudden stop at every fifteenth dingle or so, which is maddening. This performance is usually achieved by a boy up in the steeple, who takes hold of the clapper, or a little rope attached to it, and tries to dingle louder than every other boy similarly employed. The noise is supposed to be particularly obnoxious to Evil Spirits; but looking ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... A maddening joy pounded in his brain. Jeanne's voice came to him sweetly, with a shyness in it that made him feel like a boy. He was glad that the night concealed his face. He would have given ...
— Flower of the North • James Oliver Curwood
... are the facts which had preceded her visit to Stradella's lodging, and which resulted in the maddening disappointment and humiliation she felt when she turned her ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... gathered round the two girls. But Alizon only clasped her hands more tightly round Dorothy; while the latter, on whose brain the maddening potion still worked, laughed frantically at them. It was at this moment that Elizabeth Device, who had conceived a project of revenge, put it into execution. While near Dorothy, she stamped, spat on the ground, and then cast a little ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... H. B. Wheatley: "I can scarcely imagine anything more maddening than a frequent reference to cards in a drawer." But it is to be considered that all systems have defects, and the problem of choosing the least defective is ever before us. Most of the suggested defects of the card catalogue, as concerns the readers, can ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... was depressed with apprehension of he knew not what terrible fate awaited him and was close at hand. Never, in his experience of men, had he been so treated, while the confinement of the box was maddening with its suggestion of the trap. Trapped he was, and helpless, and the ultimate evil of life had happened to Steward, who had evidently been swallowed up by the Nothingness which had swallowed up Meringe, the Eugenie, the Solomon Islands, the Makambo, Australia, ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... the beautiful snow! How the flakes gather and laugh as they go! Whirling about in its maddening fun, It plays in its glee with every one. Chasing, Laughing, Hurrying by, It lights up the face and it sparkles the eye; And even the dogs, with a bark and a bound, Snap at the crystals that eddy around. The town is alive, and its ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... can, and as he could not get it out was rushing wildly about, shaking the can with much violence. He got to be a horror to us all, but we could not help him and he finally smothered to death. Oh, peaceful release from torture! Such maddening thirst and not a drop of water to be had. I went around to see how Lord Roberts was getting along and found him discouraged and heart broken. He said, "It can not be possible that our people have abandoned us, it must be some horrible mistake." I went ...
— The Nomad of the Nine Lives • A. Frances Friebe
... I was involved in this odious Social Union business from the first, and now have it left on my hands in the end, is maddening. Why, I can't get rid ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... Charlotte she was safe. In the immediate relief of this she could cry, and those tears were delicious to her. Returning from her drive, and in the solitude of her own room, she indulged in them, weeping on until no more tears would flow. They took the maddening pressure of heart and brain, and after them she felt strong and even calm. She had washed her face and smoothed her hair, and though she could not at once remove all trace of the storm through which she had just passed, she still looked better than ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade
... of the besiegers were, however, two of their principal foes. The Indian dashed recklessly from post to post. Sooner or later he would pay for it. The continued impunity of the boss was more maddening. Above the rails Koppy could see the slight bulge on which so many shots had been wasted. Probably it was only Torrance's clothing. From the floor of the forest he seemed to ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... dead silence, and on the balcony above stood Rienzi—his head was bared and the morning sun shone over that lordly brow, and the hair grown grey before its time, in the service of that maddening multitude. Pale and erect he stood—neither fear, nor anger, nor menace—but deep grief and high resolve—upon his features! A momentary shame—a ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... garden out there, and real clothes-dryers and some wistaria and sparrows—just like real back yards. I want to hear cats make harrowing music on my own back fence; I want to see a tidy laundress pinning up intimate and indescribable garments on my own clothes-lines; I want to have maddening trouble with plumbers and ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... limb contagions fly, 40 Deform'd and choked they burst and die. 'When Luxury opens wide her arms, And smiling wooes thee to those charms, Whose fascination thousands own, Shall thy brows wear the stoic frown? 45 And when her goblet she extends Which maddening myriads press around, What power divine thy soul befriends That thou should'st dash it to the ground?— No, thou shalt drink, and thou shalt know 50 Her transient bliss, her lasting woe, Her maniac joys, that know no measure, And Riot rude and painted Pleasure;— Till (sad reverse!) ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... whole life was absorbed in contemplation as rapt as that of any of the Romish saints. Every hour that I gazed upon the divine form strengthened my passion—a passion that was always overshadowed by the maddening conviction that, although I could gaze on her at will, she ...
— The Diamond Lens • Fitz-James O'brien
... At other times her letter was triumphant, optimistic; she seemed radiant, and the painter read her satisfaction between the lines; he divined her intoxication after those daring meetings in her own house, defying the count's blindness. And she told him everything, with shameless, maddening familiarity, as if he were a woman, as if he could not be moved in the least by ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... had he lost her, but his loss was another's gain. The pricking of jealousy, for a while suspended, again became maddening. He had heard her say that she would die rather than be his wife; judge, then, what must be her love of the man she bud chosen. His desire now was to do her injury, and his fiercest torment was the thought that he dared not fulfil the menace ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... likewise Sweeney did not stir. For a second his slow brain failed to grasp the truth, the deliberate challenge of the refusal; then of a sudden, in a blinding, maddening flood, came comprehension, came action. Swifter than any human being would have thought possible, unbelievably ferocious even in this land of licence, something took place, something which the staring onlookers did not realise until it ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... had longed for freedom, on and on, with craving for the open sky, for solitude, for green silence, beyond these maddening walls. This heedful silken coming and going, these Sunday voices, this reiterant yelp of a single peevish bell—would they never cease? And above all, betwixt dread and an almost physical greed, he hungered for night. He sat down with elbows on knees ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... certain, that I am the victim of an aberration," he said. "I do not speak of the Eucharist; there my thoughts may not be exact, but at least they are not maddening, while as for ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... Jesuits,—to the prevalence of religious indifference under the guise of Roman Catholicism, until at last it threw off the mask and defied all authority, both human and divine, and invoked all the maddening passions of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... weary way to their fate, and went on in an automatic fashion, resting, tramping on again over patches of sand and clean hard places where the rock had been worn smooth. The pangs of hunger attacked them more and more, and then came maddening thirst which they assuaged by drinking from one of the clear pools lying in depressions, the water tasting sweet and pure. From time to time the candles were renewed in the lanthorn, and the rate at which they burned was marked with feverish earnestness; and at last, in their ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... squadrons light, Did they flinch from the battle's roar, When they burst on the guns of the Muscovite, By the echoing Black Sea shore? On! on! to the cannon's mouth they stride, With never a swerve nor a shy, Oh! the minutes of yonder maddening ride, Long years of ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... "'Far from the maddening crowd,'" quoted Belle as they swung down the quiet river road. "But do be careful, Bess," she urged. "I know you understand as much about the car as I do, but I always feel that I ought to have a life preserver on when any mere girl—including myself—is at ...
— The Motor Girls • Margaret Penrose
... a life might not in some way have disturbed the man's mind, at least temporarily. Wasn't it possible for one, in such a case, to do queer things and never remember anything about them afterwards? No one better than she knew what a terrible and maddening thing loneliness was. She recollected distracting hours spent in little hall-bedrooms while she tried to mend, after an exhausting day's work, the poor clothing that wore out so terribly soon, and how at times she had felt that she must ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... Drake Vernon. I concealed my real name and rank; but I had no base motive in doing so. I was sick of the world, and weary of it and myself, and I longed to escape the maddening notoriety which harassed me. And then, when I thought—ah, no! I won't say thought, for; I know that then, ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... How absurd people were! The fat Hodges boy and his motorcycle! Did they all regard her as an amiable lunatic—even little, lovely, friendly Rosemary, wavering sleepily at her side? It really was maddening. But she felt, amazingly enough, suddenly quiet and joyous and indifferent—and passionately glad that the wanderer from the skies had won safely through and was speeding home. Home! Oh, it was a crying pity that it ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... prevalent among the citizens. We were now ourselves tortured by suspense. Could we escape, or should we again have to seek refuge from the flames? Surely the work of destruction would stop before it reached India Street? The hot breath of the maddening fire, and its lurid glare, were the only response. O, if the wind would only change! But a vane, glistening like gold in the firelight, steadfastly pointed to the southeast. For one moment it veered, and our hearts almost stood still with hope; but it swung back, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... maddening," continued the elder man. "We know that Antony Ferrara visits Mr. Saunderson's house; we know that he is laughing at our vain attempts to trap him. Crowning comedy of all, Saunderson does not know the truth; he is not the type of man who could ever ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... rain forms a rushing cataract in front of that horizon toward which we are running with such maddening speed. But before it has reached us the rain cloud parts asunder, the sea boils, and the electric fires are brought into violent action by a mighty chemical power that descends from the higher regions. The most vivid flashes of lightning are mingled with the violent ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... days spent in fierce excitement—nights passed in reckless dissipation. He had never forgotten Lucy through it all, but even her image only goaded him to fresh extravagances—anything to deaden the sting of remembrance—anything to efface the maddening past. So Cousin Edward too became a Jacobite; and was there a daring scheme to be executed, a foolhardy exploit to be performed—life and limb to be risked without a question—who so ready and so reckless ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... felt shame for having kept the girl in the harbor against her prayers, and for the lies he had told her and the destruction of the letters; but he was neither humble nor contrite. Shame was a bitter and maddening emotion for one of his nature. He brooded over this shame, and over that aroused by the girl's scorn, until his finer feelings toward her were burned out and blown abroad like ashes. His infatuation lost its fine, ennobling element ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... them strikes his brain, breathing out in a blood-curdling whisper, "How silent is this town!" his Bertuccio, begging at the door of the banquet-hall, and breaking down in hysterics of affected glee and maddening agony; his Lear, at that supreme moment of intolerable torture when he parts away from Goneril and Regan, with his wild scream of revenges that shall be the terrors of the earth; his Richard the Third, with the ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... shoulder. "Oh, yes, I understand," and he heard from her lips the maddening sweetness of his boy name. "I understand," she sobbed. "I don't care, Ab—if only—, you will be ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... moment—here again the evidence is unanimous—at that moment came sudden, absolute darkness, followed immediately by the maddening din of all the bells and all the gongs, from top to bottom of the house, in every room and ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... thousands of freshwater fish I saw mounted by taxidermy, not one was without those ridiculous little spears (cut from large rushes, or from paper) growing from the bottom of the case, each one, or each bunch of them, erect as possible, and almost always arranged at equal distances apart, with maddening precision. ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... Albeit for such I could despise a crown Of aught save laurel, or for such could die. I am a fool of passion, and a frown Of thine to me is as an adder's eye. To the poor bird whose pinion fluttering down Wafts unto death the breast it bore so high; Such is this maddening fascination grown, So strong thy magic or ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... intellect. Has love no future? Has right no triumph? Is the unfinished self to remain unfinished? The alternatives are two, Christianity or Pessimism. But when we ascend the further height of the religious nature, the crisis comes. There, without Environment, the darkness is unutterable. So maddening now becomes the mystery that men are compelled to construct an Environment for themselves. No Environment here is unthinkable. An altar of some sort men must have— God, or Nature, or Law. But the anguish of Atheism is only ...
— Beautiful Thoughts • Henry Drummond
... last, and there joined Sir Colin Campbell's force. The sight of this house of murder was simply maddening to the men. They left the place next morning with a sort of shudder, and set their faces towards Lucknow. It was not till we were well on the march that I had leisure to look about me and notice how ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... saw a spectacle which froze my very blood. Twenty men and women, perhaps, some of them Europeans, some natives, some dressed in seamen's dress, some in rags, some quite naked, were dancing a wild, fantastic, maddening dance which no foaming Dervish could have surpassed, aye, or imitated, in his cruellest moments. Whirling round and round, extending their arms to the sky, sometimes casting themselves headlong on the ground, biting the earth with savage ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... life, their flight they ply, And shriek, and shout, and battle-cry, And weapons waving to the sky, Are maddening in ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... top of wooden steps. He was already refreshed; he had tasted the breath of nature, measured his long grind in New York, without a vacation, with the repetition of the daily movement up and down the long, straight, maddening city, like a bucket in a well or ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... Dove around an antique cross, Which long had stood afront the pallid bust Of haughty Pallas o'er my chamber door: Neglected it had been through all the storm Of maddening doubts born from the demon cry Reechoing from the night's Plutonian shore: ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... my graying hair," Mercedes frankly disclaimed. "I shall sell it for the money. Much that I do, when the rheumatism is not maddening my fingers, I sell. La la, my dear, 'tis not old Barry's fifty a month that'll satisfy all my expensive tastes. 'Tis I that make up the difference. And old age needs money as never youth needs it. Some day ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... hesitated. And Justine, with the maddening gentleness of the person prepared to carry a point at ...
— The Treasure • Kathleen Norris
... out by the back way, generally through the kitchen, and the crackling and hissing of the poultry and the joints of meat roasting in the ovens, and the odours of fruit pies and tarts, and plum puddings and sage and onions, were simply maddening. In the back-yards of these houses there were usually huge stacks of empty beer, stout and wine bottles, and others that had contained ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... feast, Than claims the boor from scythe released, On these scorched fields were known! Death hovered o'er the maddening rout, And, in the thrilling battle-shout, Sent for the bloody banquet out A summons of his own. Through rolling smoke the Demon's eye Could well each destined guest espy, Well could his ear in ecstasy Distinguish every tone That ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... dreadful alarms; diseased with care; cankered with solitude; corroded with regret; gnawed by remorse; he dies within himself; his conscience sustains him not but loads him with reproach; his mind, overwhelmed, sinks beneath its own turpitude; his reflection is the bitter dregs of hemlock; maddening anguish holds him to the mirror that shews him his own deformity; that recalls unhallowed deeds; gloomy thoughts rush on his too faithful memory; despondence benumbs him; his body, simultaneously assailed on all sides, bends under the storm of—his own ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... of listeners, had been repeated and widely circulated; she heard them whispered everywhere. Against a legion of soldiers she would have been brave; but this mysterious influence, more pernicious and powerful than the sword, but impossible to grasp, was maddening! Herodias strode to and fro upon the terrace, white with rage, unable to find words to express the ...
— Herodias • Gustave Flaubert
... Stream we had an outer temperature of 28 deg. Celsius. This was about the warmth of the surrounding water. Fresh air no longer entered. In the engine-room two 6-cylinder combustion motors kept hammering away in a maddening two-four time. They hurled the power of their explosions into the whirling crankshafts. The red-hot breath of the consumed gases went crashing out through the exhausts, but the glow of these incessant ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... devilled partridge, the truffled salad, the fine yellow cheese, and the long bottle of good red Beaune, revealed when the cover was off, I could almost have forgiven the old rascal for his scandal- mongering. As for my vis-a-vis, she pronounced it a "maddening sight." ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... passed away, and he saw that maddening circle with the caracoling steeds. He head the discordant music, the monotonous creak of the machinery, the strident laughter of the excited riders. As first the thing was a blur, a kaleidoscope of whirling colors, ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... crowd comes flying a man that nothing can stay, Maddening against the gate that is locked athwart his way. "No! we keep the bridge for them that can help him. You, Tell us, who are you?" "His brother!" "God help you both! Pass through." Wild, with wide arms of imploring he calls aloud to him, Unto the face of his ...
— Poems • William D. Howells
... them, in a tremendous hurry. She wasn't ready yet. It was a maddening, protracted agony, getting Laura off. She had forgotten to lock the cupboard where the whisky was (a shilling's worth in a medicine bottle); and poor Papa might find it. Since he had had his sunstroke you ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... air above them, than instinctively they gave a great plunge forward, and broke into a gallop. Not a sound was heard from the two who sat behind. Mansana repeated the performance, and this time with maddening effect upon the horses. The road at this point began to slope down towards a stiff, steep hill; and precisely at this very point, Mansana, for the third time, raised the whip, swung it in lasso fashion round his head, and brought it down upon the backs of the animals. Such an act, at ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... my Brother, why cannot I shelter thee in my bosom, and wipe away all tears from thy eyes! Truly, the din of many-voiced Life, which, in this solitude, with the mind's organ, I could hear, was no longer a maddening discord, but a melting one; like inarticulate cries, and sobbings of a dumb creature, which in the ear of Heaven are prayers. The poor Earth, with her poor joys, was now my needy Mother, not my cruel Stepdame; Man, with his so mad Wants and so mean Endeavours, had become ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... she was convinced of her power; but, with all her maddening grace and beauty, I kept the hope still that she would fail. I could fancy Mr. Winthrop trampling ruthlessly on the strongest pleading of his heart sooner than stoop to the degradation of a second time asking her to be ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... falls of Missouri, with its loud, maddening roar, To the slopes of Pacific, an ever-green shore, To the Atlantic Ocean, with a coast sand-bound, There some of my boys are sure ...
— Our Little Brown House, A Poem of West Point • Maria L. Stewart
... another carriage that stopped the way now, and once more the barker made the night ring with what Westover felt his heartless and shameless cries for Miss Lynde's carriage. After a maddening delay, it lagged up to the curb and Jeff pulled the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... accident.' With similar faith there came to me tranquil restoration. The deluge of passion rolled back, and from the wreck of my Eden arose a new and more spiritual creation. But forgetfulness was never possible. In the maddening turbulence of my grief and the ghastly stillness of its reaction, the lovely spirit which had become a part of my life seemed to have fled to the inner temple of my soul, breaking the solitude with glimmering ray and faint melodious murmur. And when I could ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... then came back to him, rose from the depths, blinded his eyes with maddening beauty, sang in his ears, possessed his heart and mind. He burned to tell it. The world of tired, restless men, he felt, must equally burn to hear it. Some vision of a simple life lived close to Nature came before his inner eye as the remedy for the vast disease of restless ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... first-born Cain" did indeed reign in the hearts of men; and now, if ever upon this earth, it seemed likely, from the dreadful acharnement which marked the war on both sides,—the acharnement of long-hoarded vengeance and maddening remembrances in the Grecian, of towering disdain in the alarmed oppressor,—that, in very simplicity of truth, "Darkness would be the burier of ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... I love the man!" said Tiara, rising from her chair and throwing herself face downward across the bed. "Oh, I must never see him again. He might read this awful, this maddening love in ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... spectacle, being covered with gore; but a glance at the dead beast revealed the cause. The arrow had passed into the mouth, transfixing the large arteries and the base of the brain, and the blood was still deluging the ice in a crimson tide, from which the hot vapors and sickening odor rose, maddening the remaining ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... refuge— Seek it only in the grave! Love may die, and hatred slumber, And their memory will decay, As the watered garden recks not Of the drought of yesterday; But the dream of power once broken, What shall give repose again? What shall charm the serpent-furies Coiled around the maddening brain? What kind draught can nature offer Strong enough to lull their sting? Better to be born a peasant Than to live an exiled king! Oh, these years of bitter anguish!— What is life to such as me, With my very heart as palsied As a wasted ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... Colonel Blount to his senior major, "I wouldn't mind. But I can't. Only General Withers at the Divisional Headquarters, the Brigadier, you, and myself knew the details of our last scheme, and yet the Bosches got wind of them. It's maddening, maddening!" ...
— Tommy • Joseph Hocking
... a doubt, which was really a fear, as to what was going to happen; for, notwithstanding all this neglect of due precaution on the priest's part, to touch him seemed impossible, miraculously so, and every plan of attack dissolved into futility in the most maddening way. ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... gorge, a torrent ran recklessly, tearing at its rocky confines with raging hands, and crying out in many voices like a multitude bent on some deed of vengeance—hurrying, delaying, turning on itself, maddening itself. Its bellowing seemed a part of universal silence. Silence brooded here, alone, with those ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... cloth aside; she stopped short off in the middle of telling him something Miss Satterly had said—some whimsical thing—and he could hear his heart pounding in the silence which followed. The little, nickel alarm clock tick-tick-ticked with such maddening precision and speed that Chip wanted to shy a book at it, but his eyes never left the rocky bluff opposite, and the clock ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... on Thornton with maddening deliberation, "hit was in ther moonlight thet us two stud hyar, an' when ye told me ye war befriendin' me I war fool enough ter b'lieve ye. Don't ye recollict how we turned and looked down, an' ye p'inted out thet big ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... away, her low voice maddening him. "Don't you have a private room? A girl doesn't like to be ...
— A Bottle of Old Wine • Richard O. Lewis
... he perceived two jaguars, which followed his movements with glaring eyes. A single glance satisfied him they were cubs; but a maddening thought shot across his brain: the mother was out, probably not far; she might return in a moment, and he had no arms, except his knife and the barrel of his broken rifle. While musing upon his perilous situation, he heard a roar, ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... so crazy," Meta said with maddening sweetness. "We'll kill him, Jason. We'll take care ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... up-town, and it stood just enough apart from the other houses to be entirely maddening later. It was a three-story affair, with a basement kitchen and servants' dining room. Then, of course, there were cellars, as we found out afterward. On the first floor there was a large square hall, a formal reception ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... he had taken part in their lavish suppers where, at dessert, tipsy women would unfasten their clothing and strike their heads against the tables; he had haunted the green rooms, loved actresses and singers, endured, in addition to the natural stupidity he had come to expect of women, the maddening vanity of female strolling players. Finally, satiated and weary of this monotonous extravagance and the sameness of their caresses, he had plunged into the foul depths, hoping by the contrast of squalid misery to revive his desires and ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... effect of producing in her that maddening fear of the dark which ghostly tales induce, and now he fainted again. She was afraid to cry for help, afraid even of the rustle of her own garments. She did not know how far she was from any house. And it seemed to her that this lover, who was almost a stranger, was dying in her arms. The ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... aroused in Wenceslas the fury of a tiger. Exacerbation succeeded surprise; and that in turn gave way to a maddening thirst for sanguinary vengeance. He hastened out and despatched a telegraphic message to Bogota. Then he returned to his study to await ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... admission to no other thoughts. Surprize is an emotion that enfeebles, not invigorates. All my meditations were accompanied with wonder. I rambled with vagueness, or clung to one image with an obstinacy which sufficiently testified the maddening influence of late transactions. ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... true that the world has already given her memory two fingers and a perfunctory "thank ye." This was for putting her purse at Tschaikowsky's disposal, thus making it possible for him to write a few immortal compositions instead of teaching mortals the piano in a maddening conservatory. But now, glory! hallelujah! the world is soon going to render her honor long overdue for the spiritual support which so ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... proceeded," he went on, with the same maddening conscientiousness of manner, "to Mr Carr (not Mr James Carr, of course; Mr Robert Carr) who is temporarily assisting our organist, and having consulted with him (on the subject of a choir boy who is accused, I cannot as yet say whether justly or not, of cutting holes in the organ ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... Without unsurpassable difficulty, I was able to operate the machinery and steer, first for Betelguese, then for the sun. Counting on the warning bells to arouse me, I managed to get in snatches of sleep at odd intervals. At times the strain of the long watches was almost maddening. ...
— Out Around Rigel • Robert H. Wilson
... raise himself and lift his powerless arm; then returned again to the consciousness of his condition, clasped either the rosary or the crucifix, and turned his soul to fervent prayer; then, again, the strange wild cries without confounded themselves into one maddening noise on his feverish ear, or, in the confusion of his weakened faculties, he would, as it were, believe himself to be his brother dying on the field of Navaretta, and scarce be able to rouse himself to a feeling of his ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Susan McKenna rose in the air higher than she had yet gone. A maddening wail went up, and for a moment she tottered on the apex of an elevation like a wooden idol upheaved by an earthquake. Before she had time to tumble over she sank again with a thump. The great hairy bear, looking ...
— A Bicycle of Cathay • Frank R. Stockton
... fragments to the breeze. Once again her anger scarcely knew any bounds. They were away, the whole happy party, and she was shut up in a dull room, compelled to endure solitary confinement all through this glorious August day. It was insufferable, it was maddening, and it ...
— The Children of Wilton Chase • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... woke, and I lay awake for hours. Every vext problem of my life and of the hereafter presented itself to me, and had to be argued out and puzzled over with maddening reiteration. The reason for this was evident and flagrant. It had woven itself into the tissue of my brief unconsciousness, and was now recognised ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... and throbbed upon the air. It was maddening. The keenness of his disappointment gave his face an intensity of ardent expression that certainly did not detract from its charm in the eyes of the girl who at that instant glanced up into it. The next moment he was pressed aside—very decorously, very courteously, even apologetically pushed ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... now I always thought it was a lark." He changed his position on the maddening sand and sighed heavily. "But we'll get used to it in time, I guess. What other folks can do, we can, an' a mighty lot of 'em has camped out. It's all right. Here we are, free an' independent, no rent to pay, our ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... before the wind of heaven, The archery appear; For life! for life! their plight they ply, And shriek, and shout, and battle-cry, And plaids and bonnets waving high, And broadswords flashing to the sky, Are maddening in the rear. Onward they drive, in dreadful race, Pursuers and pursued; Before that tide of flight and chase, How shall it keep its rooted place, The spearmen's twilight wood? Down, down, cried Mar, 'your lances down Bear back both friend and foe!' ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... done their utmost to prepare the prince for being spoiled: the dreadful dullness of papa's Court, its stupid amusements, its dreary occupations, the maddening humdrum, the stifling sobriety of its routine, would have made a scapegrace of a much less lively prince. All the big princes bolted from that castle of ennui where old King George sat, posting up his books and droning over ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and Jasper went out together into the old grounds in the old way, and the sweet, yet sorrowful, week—so maddening to poor Hollyhock, so joyous to Jasper—was forgotten in the spirit of reunion. Oh, it was perfect for the Flower Girl to be with her precious Precious Stone again, and she even loved his dear Scots ways so much that she told him of her little adventure as a ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... had nailed canvas strips across the sides of the berths to prevent the patients from falling out), for no muscular power on earth could have enabled its possessor to keep his place on a high seat in that maddening jump. It was enough to jerk the pipe from one's mouth. The deck was all the time in a smother of half-frozen slush, and the seas were so wall-sided that the said slush fell in great plumps from side to side with a force which plucked the ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... vain. Weary and exhausted, I sat down upon my bed and ruminated over my fortunes. Vengeance—quick, entire, decisive vengeance—I thirsted and panted for; and every moment I lived under the insult inflicted on me seemed an age of torturing and maddening agony. I rose with a leap; a thought had just occurred to me. I drew the bed towards the window, and fastening the sheet to one of the posts with a firm knot, I twisted it into a rope, and let myself down to within about twelve feet of the ground, when I let go my hold, and dropped upon the ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... our hopes, our efforts, our tragedies, and finally our wonderful good fortune, to lose these beautiful lions for lack of a little water was sickening, maddening. ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... longer thought of anything. But suddenly, as he was passing a small house, where the window was half open, the smell of the soup and boiled meat stopped him suddenly, and hunger, fierce, devouring, maddening hunger, seized him and almost drove him against the walls of the house like ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... enough, for love is vanity, Selfish in its beginning as its end, Except where 't is a mere insanity, A maddening spirit which would strive to blend Itself with beauty's frail inanity, On which the passion's self seems to depend: And hence some heathenish philosophers Make love the main spring of ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... my boy, that it is very humiliating to have to beg for money which really belongs to one—for it does belong to us, to you and me, I mean—as much as to him, doesn't it? It's maddening to think that the law allows a man to ruin his relations because ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... to be, though," pursued Darn calmly, in that restrained, superior, informative manner which sometimes can be so maddening. ...
— The Circus Comes to Town • Lebbeus Mitchell
... the rhythmic stride of many men down a dusty road that grips you by the throat and makes your lungs feel like overcharged balloons? I felt something like the maddening, irritating tang of powder-smoke in my throat. Trumpet cries that I had never heard, yet somehow dimly remembered, wakened in the night about us—far and faint, but haughty with command. It took very little imagination for me to feel the whirlwind of battles I may never know, ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... pain. Risu solvuntur! The audience rose at us in wild delight—but I, in my horror and concern, knew nothing but that here was I, a poor fool in motley, and there, at some few paces from me, radiant as a star in the firmament, was the adorable being under whose maddening rays I had fallen, as struck by the sun. I gave one short cry, and fell on my knees. "Pardon, pardon, queen of my soul!" I began, when Il Nanno, beside himself with mortification, sprang at me like a wild ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... regain the confidence that had been fully hers; she tried in her own letters to prepare the way, to make confession easy, but she received no response. In such circumstances letters are at best unsatisfactory, and it was maddening to Mrs. Moss that she was at such a distance that her warm words must grow cold in the five or six days that elapsed between the ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... to be as maddening as ever. There were times when she rebelled passionately against the solitude of the place. There were moments to her when it seemed that her mind couldn't ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... said anything all the time the Seer was—" She could not continue. It was maddening to think that while she had been dreaming and planning with the Seer, her father had foreseen that their dreams would ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... are always in a hurry," he remarked as he refilled his pipe with a deliberation that was maddening to his hearers. "But just let me get my pipe drawing well, and I'll tell you all I know. It isn't so much after all as maybe you think, but it may help to piece out ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport
... A little maddening smile twisted the corners of her mouth, and Joanna remembered that now Arthur was dead and there was no hope of Ellen going back to him she need not spare ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... big enough for anything, because they have happened to kill a buffalo or rhinoceros by a shoulder shot with such an inferior rifle. If the animal had been facing them, it would have produced no effect whatever, except to intensify the charge by maddening the ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... don't joke, for there is no joy in that mad laughter. It is horrible, maddening, even to the hearer. Let us get to work. The father of the girl I love may even now be sinking to his death. We must determine the nature of this deadly stuff, and ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... passion the raw material supplied to him. No mechanical crossing and recrossing the stage, no punctilious tuition by your stage-manager—all was inspiration and fire. But to Pinchas this hearing of the play twice over—once raw and once cooked—was maddening. ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... now tell thee of duties having a very ancient origin and laid down by the Rishis, duties that are distinguished above all others. Listen to me with undivided attention. The senses that are maddening should carefully be restrained by the understanding like a sire restraining his own inexperienced children liable to fall into diverse evil habits. The withdrawal of the mind and the senses from all unworthy objects and their ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... my lyre would lightly breathe! The smile that Sorrow fain would wear But mocks the woe that lurks beneath, Like roses o'er a sepulchre. Though gay companions o'er the bowl Dispel awhile the sense of ill; Though Pleasure fires the maddening soul, The Heart,—the Heart is ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... the lowliest place Alone he stole, and sadly took his seat In dust and ashes. She, his bosom friend The sharer of his lot for many years, Sought out his dark retreat. Shuddering she saw His kingly form like living sepulchre, And in the maddening haste of sorrow said God hath forgotten. She with him had borne Unuttered woe o'er the untimely graves Of all whom she had nourished,—shared with him The silence of a home that hath no child, The plunge ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... out, turned to glance at the mill. She cried out, shrill with horror. It was a live monster now,—in one swift instant, alive with fire,—quick, greedy fire, leaping like serpents' tongues out of its hundred jaws, hungry sheets of flame maddening and writhing towards her, and under all a dull and hollow roar that shook the night. Did it call her to her death? She turned to fly, and then——He was alone, dying! He had been so kind to her! She wrung ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... bed, he tried to enumerate on his fingers the young men who remained unpledged. Starting with his thumb he got as far as the third finger of his left hand and then, being sleepy and the effort a trying one, he lost track of those already counted and had to begin all over again, with the maddening result that he could go no further than the second finger. One of the eligibles had slipped his mind completely. The ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... others complaining of the loneliness of our surroundings, I said nothing at first. I was no sailor man, and I was on board only by tolerance. But I looked again at the maddening sameness of the horizon—the same vacant, void horizon that we had seen now for sixteen days on end, and felt in my wits and in my nerves that same formless rebellion and protest such as comes when the same note is reiterated ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... There were a dozen men about the work of the same type as Layson's, and their calm cocksureness as they directed all these mysteries amazed him, overwhelmed him, made him feel a sense of littleness and unimportance which was maddening. Why should they know all these things when he, Joe Lorey, who had lived a decent life according to his lights, had labored with his muscles as theirs could not labor if they tried to force them to, had lived ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... but her hands never rest; we notice the celerity of her movements, the dreadful automatic certainty of her touch is almost maddening; we wait and watch, but all in vain, for some false movement that shall tell us she is a human and not a machine. But no, over her shoulder to the bed on the left side, or over her shoulder to the bed on her right side, the boxes fly, and minute by minute and ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... through his tortured back, through his cringing neck, till the whole reeking misery seemed to foam and froth in his brain in an utter frenzy of furious resentment. Again the day dragged by with maddening monotony and loneliness. Again the clock mocked him, and the postman shirked him, and the janitor forgot him. Again the big, black night came crowding down and stung him and smothered him into a ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... descend in torrents, and I found myself a close prisoner in the sanded parlour of "mine inn." At no time would such "durance vile" have been agreeable; but now, when I contrasted it with all I had left behind at head quarters, it was absolutely maddening. The pleasant lounge in the morning, the social mess, and the agreeable evening party, were all exchanged for a short promenade of fourteen feet in one direction, and twelve in the other, such being the accurate measurement of my "salle a manger." A chicken, with legs ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... which boats of all sizes and shapes so often run. The loss of time is irritating enough, goodness knows, in ordinary travelling and occurs quite frequently, but when one is love-driven and this maddening delay happens, then you have to make as big an exercise of self-control as when you rush onto the platform only to see the guard's van of your train ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... expanses of muskeg, over barren rock ridges, wound the unmarked trail. An army of caribou, drifting south in the distance, was all the life the doomed man saw in that long morning. Even the small live creatures seemed to have deserted this maddening region. ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... haughty resignation the day following Virginia's departure, so there was no way of learning anything from that source, and the detective he had employed had thus far discovered nothing. She might be in difficulties, in actual want and would not ask assistance from sheer pride. The thought was maddening and for days Stafford, distraught, unable to attend to his affairs, remained in the house, hoping, half expecting, she would return until the uncertainty and continual disappointment nearly drove him insane. He could not eat; he could not sleep. His ears still ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... either song was ended, all three broke out into a dance, wild, insensate, furious, delirious, paroxysmatical. No Orphic festivals on Mount Cithaeron ever raged more wildly. No Bacchic revels on Mount Parnassus were ever more corybantic. Diana, demented by the maddening example, joined in the orgie, howling and barking frantically in her turn, and wildly jumping as high as the ceiling of the Projectile. Then came new accessions to the infernal din. Wings suddenly began to flutter, cocks to crow, hens to cluck; and five or six chickens, managing ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... hard. He was suffering the torments of Tantalus. The castle was full of young men of the kind to whom he most resorted, easy marks every one; and here he was, simply through Jimmy, careened like a disabled battleship. It was maddening. "Make him go. You invited him here. He doesn't expect to stop indefinitely, I suppose? If you left, he'd have to, too. What you must do is to go back to London to-morrow. You can easily make some excuse. He'll have to go with you. Then, you ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... pilot as Paddy might thrust a ship. The great black wall of rock loomed up by their side, grim and pitiless as doom—a very door of adamant closed against all hope. Nearer and nearer they drew, until the roar of the baffled Pacific was deafening, maddening, in its overwhelming volume of chaotic sound. All hands stood motionless, with eyes fixed in horrible fascination upon the indescribable vortex to which ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... To want to take us back there to face the half-hidden mockery and jokes of all those strangers. Oh, it's maddening!" ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... the power of endurance reached, how much a man could bear. He was torn with the fierce promptings of primeval forces. To take her, willing or unwilling, despite honour, despite all that stood between them, to make her his and hold her in the face of all the world—at times the temptation had been maddening. There had been days when he had not dared to look on her, when he had drawn himself more than ever apart from the common life, fearful of himself, fearful of circumstances that seemed beyond his ordering. ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... mention it...." Lanyard cocked his head to one side with a maddening effect of deliberation. "No," he concluded—"no; I wouldn't accuse you of intentional treason, monsieur; for that would involve an ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... Dale sadly. "Oh, but it is maddening just as success had attended us!" and he relapsed into gloomy silence, as Melchior went about the grotto holding the lanthorn to its glittering ceiling, the light flashing from hundreds of crystals; but every one worth taking as a specimen had been removed, and a great rusty hammer with which ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... The scattering shots become a steady roll, Broke by sharp cracks that run along the line, The light artillery of the talker's wine. The kindling goblets flame with golden dews, The hoarded flasks their tawny fire diffuse, And the Rhine's breast-milk gushes cold and bright, Pale as the moon and maddening as her light; With crimson juice the thirsty southern sky Sucks from the hills where buried armies lie, So that the dreamy passion it imparts Is drawn from heroes' bones and lovers' hearts. But lulls will come; the flashing soul transmits ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... you venture to incline your ear when I kneel before you and venture to hear me when I whisper, 'Father I have sinned;' I love a man with a maddening love that sets my brain on fire; I cannot pray, for his name ever rushes to my lips; I cannot look to the saints above, for everywhere I see his face; I cannot do penance, for I love my sin, and am ever returning ...
— Peter the Priest • Mr Jkai
... upon the wine when it was red, and found in its dregs the sting of the adder. He had participated in the maddening excitement of the gaming-table, from which remorse and horror pursued him with scorpion lash. He had entered the "chambers of death"—though avenging demons guarded its threshold. Poor, tempted Louis! poor, fallen Louis! In how short ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... "It is maddening, Virginia," said the man, "to be constantly straining every resource of my memory in futile endeavor to catch and hold one fleeting clue to my past. Why, dear, do you realize that I may have been a fugitive from justice, as was von Horn, a ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... ourselves tortured by suspense. Could we escape, or should we again have to seek refuge from the flames? Surely the work of destruction would stop before it reached India Street? The hot breath of the maddening fire, and its lurid glare, were the only response. O, if the wind would only change! But a vane, glistening like gold in the firelight, steadfastly pointed to the southeast. For one moment it veered, and our hearts almost stood still with hope; but it swung back, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... all from the grateful, wistful Irish eyes about him. He was breathless with haste to be off. The long trip to New England was a never-ending nightmare of delay to him, and although he had planned for years to walk up the hill, his trembling old legs dragged in a slow progress maddening to his impatience. A farmer, driving by, offered him a lift, which he accepted gratefully, sitting strained far forward on the high seat. At a turn of the road he looked back and saw that he had passed the cluster of pines where Moira had ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... disappointed, as she much preferred having the thing over and done with than hanging fire for several days. The girls crowded about her, expressing both admiration and criticism and offering advice until Elizabeth did not know whether she was a culprit or a heroine. The maddening part of it was that she must wait three days to find out. Her own opinion in regard to being "policed" into honesty had not changed. She felt confident of the support of her father in the position she had taken. She ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird
... be fear'd; Through every limb contagions fly, 40 Deform'd and choked they burst and die. 'When Luxury opens wide her arms, And smiling wooes thee to those charms, Whose fascination thousands own, Shall thy brows wear the stoic frown? 45 And when her goblet she extends Which maddening myriads press around, What power divine thy soul befriends That thou should'st dash it to the ground?— No, thou shalt drink, and thou shalt know 50 Her transient bliss, her lasting woe, Her maniac joys, that know no measure, And Riot rude and painted Pleasure;— Till (sad reverse!) the Enchantress ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Full of crazy wrath, So furious and fast they fly They blur the earth and blot the sky In wild, white mirk. They fill the air with frozen wings And tiny, angry, icy stings; They blind the eyes, and choke the breath, They dance a maddening dance of death Around their work, Sweeping the cover from the hill, Heaping the hollows deeper still, Effacing every line and mark, And swarming, storming in the dark Through the long night; Until, at dawn, the wind lies down, Weary of fight. The last ...
— The White Bees • Henry Van Dyke
... maiden, as she beheld the deplorable, the maddening sight, might have melted hearts of stone, had there been even such among the Indians. But Indians, engaged in the delights of torturing a prisoner, are, as the dead chief had boasted himself, without ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... raising her voice for the first time, so that it could be heard by any others than her nearest neighbor; "right well can I comprehend it; were I a man myself, I feel that I should pant for the battle. The triumph would be more than rapture; and strife, for its own sake, maddening bliss! Heavens! to see the gladiators wheel and charge; to see their swords flash in the sun; and the red blood gush out unheeded; and the grim faces flushed and furious; and the eyes greedily devouring the wounds of the foeman, ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... questioned only the extent of my patience, which I felt fast giving way as the preparations for Miss Dudleigh's marriage proceeded without my seeing any immediate prospect of my own. You can realize, then, the maddening nature of the shock which I received when, coming quietly into the house as I did one day, I beheld her face disappearing through one of the doorways, with that look upon it which I had always felt was natural to it, but which no passion ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... It now struck me, that the water spoken of by the natives at Yeerkumban-kauwe might be situated among these sand-hills, and that we were going away from instead of approaching it. The bare idea of such a possibility was almost maddening, and as the dreadful thought flashed across my mind I stood for a moment undecided and irresolute as to what I ought to do. We were now many miles past these hills, and if we went back to examine them for water, and did not find it, we could never hope that our horses would be able ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... and secretly to smear a mixture of coriander and oil of sassafras upon some part of their bodies, and then either to lure or drive them into the forest; for by a peculiar arrangement of Mother Nature this mixture has a fascination, a maddening effect upon the Mynga Worm—just as a red rag has on a bull—and, enraged by the scent, it finds the spot smeared with it and ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... to believe the officer had left his seat yonder, and therefore dare not drop to the ground. My heart ached for the girl, and I longed to get my hands on that cur of a Le Gaire, yet might venture to approach neither. It was a maddening situation, but I could only stand there in the dark, gripping the rail, unable to decide my duty. Perhaps she did love me—in spite of that vigorous denial, perhaps she did—and the very possibility made the blood surge hot through my veins. ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... mountain top by some other way, the horrible crevasse curved its course likewise, still confronting me. It was always before me, to arrest my progress. I could not evade it, I could not overleap it; and yet, there stood Min calling to me, and beckoning to me—and, I could not join her. It was maddening! ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... the top of the social ladder means poverty at the bottom. The world has never yet been so rich that waste did not work harm to the neediest. Even if the poor had been actually no poorer in these flush days than they had been when manners were simpler, the glaring contrasts would have been maddening. But multitudes of them were, no doubt, not only relatively but positively poorer; the destruction of the guilds of labor, the displacements in industry, had left great numbers not only of the peasantry and the artisans but also of the poorer ...
— The Church and Modern Life • Washington Gladden
... they showed for his feelings was maddening, and for the first time in his life he became a prey to jealousy in its worst form. It was quite clear to him that the girl had become desperately enamoured of the skipper, and he racked his brain in a wild effort to discover ...
— Lady of the Barge and Others, Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... was a murderess—or in sympathy with murderers. My arms fell from her. I drew back shuddering. I dared not look in her lying eyes, which cried pity when her base heart knew no mercy. Surely now I had solved the maddening puzzle which the character of this girl had, so far, presented to me. Yet the true solution was as far from me as ever. Indeed, I could not well have been further from it than at ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... from the height above she could see a swiftly darting shadow which she knew was the reflection of a homeward-bound hawk in the skies higher yet. Leaves floated in a still, deep pool, were caught in a maddening eddy, and hurried frantically away, unwilling, frenzied, helpless, unknowing whither, never to return,—allegory of many a life outside those darkling solemn mountain woods, and of some, perhaps, in the midst of them. The reflection of the ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... moodily out over the place of the topsy turvy house, his own mind awhirl with the maddening force of the furious winds through which ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... lost soul. But many times that mood broke down by its own weight. Her light, child-like laugh, her high, clear voice talking so glibly and cheerily to people whom, as like as not, he knew she despised, came to him with a hollow, heartless ring that was maddening. He could not study; he could think of nothing worthy. He would rush away from the sound that he was frightened to perceive was becoming hateful. And the unconscious influence of Stella was always a steadying and restoring one. He believed he should ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... paddling felt no fatigue. They knew that at night they were to have a feast. Already the fires of the maddening drink had made the blood in their dull veins course quickly. They anticipated the excitement that would make them forget they had ever been cold or hungry; and bring to them bright dreams of that world where sorrow ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
... looking at her began to feel that half-maddening sense of helplessness which comes over passionate people when their passion is met by an innocent-looking silence whose meek victimized air seems to put them in the wrong, and at last infects even the ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... done. It was well for me in the first moments of this new solitude, of this maddening agony, that there was instant work imperatively demanding the attention of the mind as well as the exercise of the body. I had first, by means of the air pump, to fill the vessel with an atmosphere as dense as that in which I had been born and lived so long; ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... in a maddening way. "Well, I suppose it was giving her the handkerchief made her break down and I don't believe she thought I'd come straight out here and tell you girls. And I'm only telling you because I think maybe we can help her. After she'd taken the handkerchief ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... welcome variation. I wonder sometimes whether the saints in heaven do not occasionally feel the continual serenity a burden. To myself a life of endless bliss, uninterrupted by a single contrasting note, would, I feel, grow maddening. I suppose," I continued, "I am a strange sort of man; I can hardly understand myself at times. There are moments," I added, "when I ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... the thick of it the Goorkhas—keen little Highlanders of the Indian army—looked in vain for the fighting light in their leader's eyes. They listened in vain for the encouraging voice—now low and steady in warning, now trumpet-like and maddening with the ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... for Maggie Miller to answer that appeal. The words had burned into her soul—scorching her very life-blood, and maddening her brain. It was a fearful blow—crushing her at once. She saw it all, understood it all, and knew there was no hope. The family pride at which she had often laughed was strong within her, and could not ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... clean of all hope and feeling. Then his furious temper, the failing that, above every other, was his curse and bane, came to his aid and occupied it like the seven devils of Scripture, bringing in its train his re-awakened vanity, hatred, jealousy, and other maddening passions. It could not be true, there must be an explanation, and, of course, the explanation was that Foy had been so fortunate, or so cunning as to make advances to Elsa soon after she had swallowed the love philtre. Adrian, like most people in his day, was ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... he was not: he was dead. Quite incomprehensible! In my childhood I had often racked my brains with the question, "What is there beyond the world?" Void. Well, and what surrounds that void? Many times this distracting thought drove me almost to madness. Now this same maddening dilemma seized upon me. How could it be that my father ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... Scotland Yard at our disposal we cannot trace that damnable cab! We cannot find the headquarters of the group—we cannot move! To sit here inactive whilst Sir Baldwin Frazer—God knows for what purpose!— is perhaps being smuggled out of the country, is maddening—maddening!" Then, glancing quickly across to me: ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... in the hall, resisting the temptation to go into the beautiful night. At least he would see her on her way back. But he waited until nearly eleven, and she never appeared, and then the maddening thought came to him—she had probably passed to her rooms along the terrace outside, ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... had been of great use to him in describing the various outlaws and prowlers of Paris, and in pointing out to him their secret dens and the secluded places of rendezvous where they met, drank vile liquors, and, under the maddening influence of absinthe and alcohol, plotted their crimes and atrocities of every description. This man, another Quasimodo in point of hideous aspect, had been dismissed from the detective service because of his inability to keep ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... rhythmically round the big room, as though fatigue was a thing unknown. Once or twice Jim caught sight of the angel of his dreams, with face no longer pale, hanging on some man's arm, immersed in the all-consuming measure. It was maddening.... ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... enormous feeling of relief and yet an almost maddening sense of helplessness. She was imprisoned by the Hands. She was in their power, and up till now they had shown themselves ruthless enough. A room with a roof window only! How could she define her whereabouts! His first impulse was to rush ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to be "making a dash" for the Edith, a river twelve miles farther on; but there was nothing very dashing about our pace. The air was stiflingly, swelteringly hot, and the flies maddening in their persistence. The horses developed puffs, and when we were not being half-drowned in torrents of rain we were being parboiled in steamy atmosphere. The track was as tracks usually are "during the Wet," and for four hours we laboured on, slipping ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... consider," says Mr. Browne, mildly. "If it had been anyone else's hand! I could then accuse the moonbeams of a secondary offense, and say that their influence alone, which we all know has a maddening effect, had driven him to so bold a deed. But not madness itself could inspire me with a longing to kiss ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... elsewhere—I could negotiate that—it was those pesky bees. Reshingling the sides of the house had closed their outlets, and they had now found a crevice somewhere around the big chimney and were pouring in and out, whizzing and buzzing around the room by the hundred, clinging to the windows in droves, a maddening distraction on a hot afternoon to a man with his head tipped back, in the act of laying a long, flimsy strip of wall-paper on a wavy, billowy old ceiling. They were no longer vicious and dangerous—they ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... familiar with such things. She took a little gold pencil from a chain about her neck and made notes on a bit of paper from what she read, and she joined not at all in the conversation unless she was spoken to, and then her thoughts seemed to be elsewhere. It was maddening. ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... intense a force. It was as if she were staking the whole of her faith upon that one importunate plea, and though no answer came to her striving spirit, she told herself that it could not be in vain. In all her maddening anxiety and impatience she never for a moment dwelt upon the chance of failure. God could not suffer her to fail when she had fought so hard. Her very brain seemed on fire with the urgency of her mission, and again for a space the thought of Burke was crowded out. ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
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